Thomas Klingensmith

Chapter 3: 94-113.

In Chapter 3 of Feminist Thought, Tong deals with the ideas of Marxist and Socialist feminism. First Tong describes the general outlines of Marxist vs. Liberal/Capitalist thought regarding economy and labor. She talks about how Marxism stresses the need for equality and the laborers controlling the means of production, and how it describes capitalism as a purely exploitative system, where the workers are basically slaves and have no true freedom. She also goes on to explain how the current system of men working outside the home, and women staying home doing uncompensated housework arose, and what issues surround this. Engel stated that this originally started when men began domesticating animals and bringing in large amounts of protein and so forth into the community, this rapidly diminished the importance of the role of women. Further more, men started to want only their bloodline to receive their surplus, so their women were demanded to be monogamous. He argues that once class society and the economic dependence of women on men is eliminated, marriages based only on love can exist.

Marxist feminine theory stresses an understanding of general Marxist theory because it makes the proposal that the place a woman had in the socio-economic machine, directly determines how she is viewed, and how she views herself, not the other way around. This goes along with the general Marxist theory that things like racism or sexism are not really created by individual's decisions, but rather they are byproducts of the social and economic class systems that exist.

Marx argued that for equality among women and men to exist there are a number of economic realities that need to be changed. First, housework needs to be socialized. This would allow women to actually participate fully in the workforce, without having to balance that with being at home to housework. It had also been proposed that housework should actually be paid work. But there were problems pointed out in this idea, such as the fact that is would just further the idea of what was "women's work", as well as keep women out of the main work force. This brings up two other keys to equality. The idea of certain work being fit for women and other work for men is harmful and results in a schism between how the two sexes are treated. And in addition, Marx stated the importance of getting the women fully into the working pool.

Finally, Tong discusses the idea of comparable worth. This is the idea that how much people are paid should be based on a number of universal criteria such as mental demands, accountability, and working conditions. Based on these guidelines, men and women can be paid equally for work they do.